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“This is as big a change to wireless as tubes-to-transistor was to electronics,”

Mobile broadband speeds have come a long way in the last few years with the rollout of LTE networks across the US and several other countries. But as the number of data-hungry smartphone and tablet users continues to rise, even the fastest of connections face inevitable slowdowns while devices compete for bandwidth from a single tower. This is specially true in densely packed settings like stadiums or public transport stations.

Steve Perlman believes his company's pCell technology (short for “personal cell”) will be the definitive answer to this problem, and he’s not afraid to set expectations incredibly high. “This is as big a change to wireless as tubes-to-transistor was to electronics,” he recently told The New York Times.

To work properly, a company backing the pCell technology would need to build out a large data center in addition to deploying the transmitters. It’s in the data center where servers constantly crunch away on the algorithms that form the unique wireless stream aimed at each device. As people move about, the servers must keep recalculating and processing a new stream. Perlman expects that a single data center could satisfy the needs of a city like San Francisco.

Perlman has spent about 10 years working on this technology with a handful of employees. I paid a recent visit to their San Francisco laboratory and saw the technology working firsthand. Perlman had put a few of the transmitters up near the ceiling and was able to direct a wireless beam right at a device in my hand. Despite such demonstrations, Perlman has been unable to tempt venture capitalists with the technology. “They invariably bring in experts who say it doesn’t really work,” he says. “I am showing them a demo, but they remain convinced that it’s something else.”

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Perlman has some pretty big hurdles to overcome, but more than one true innovative technology has had similar difficulties getting backing.

Right, but it was Bezos that said (back when we didn't know what it really was other than Ginger) "cities will be redesigned around this device". I don't think Kamen himself ever indicated anything so grandiose, but it's one example of many on how something is supposed to change the world, or be the invention of the 21st century etc, and is little more than a whimper.